


Here is a story I'm not writing

by greedy_dancer



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Meta, Notfic, Steve Rogers Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 08:39:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1016480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greedy_dancer/pseuds/greedy_dancer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Here is a story I am not writing. It's a story about Steve and depression and how life is just the time it takes for everyone who knows you to die. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here is a story I'm not writing

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to DW & LJ Oct 22nd, 2012. Unbetaed.

Here is a story I'm not writing. It's a story about Steve and depression and how life is just the time it takes for everyone who knows you to die.

It's a story about old Mrs Johnson who lived upstairs and how Steve's mom would send him up to bring her soup even though they barely had enough for two, because Mrs Johnson wouldn't leave her bed anymore; Steve had asked her why, once, and she'd said that she was waiting for death to come take her, that she was waiting to be reunited with her John and her Sophie and her Henry. She'd had a long life, she'd told Steve. She was ready to go.

It's a story about how Steve hadn't had a lot of people who knew him, but he'd had Bucky, and when Steve hadn't been able to save him, half of Steve's life had fallen too. There would still be enough left for Peggy, he'd thought then; Peggy knew him, not a lot, not like Bucky, but maybe she knew enough to keep Steve alive. But then there was the plane, the crash, the ice.

It was so unfair, Steve thought then, that old Mrs Johnson lingered for so long when she wished for death so badly but that Steve would die when he had lived so little, done so little; for all that he'd punched Hitler 200 times and helped wipe off Hydra bases, he'd had so little time. Then he thought about seeing Bucky again soon and it eased the cold a little, or maybe sped it along so everything was quiet and numb and Steve could close his eyes.

The most unfair events of all, though, is that Steve wakes up from the blessed quiet. He wakes up, and this time he is truly alone. They're all gone, not only the people who actually knew him but even those who knew _of_ him, of Steve Rogers. And while Steve was dead they did worse; they replaced Steve Rogers with Captain America, and wrote about him and made movies about him so that everyone _thinks_ they know him. But no one does. There is nothing for Steve here.

So then, of course, it becomes a story about duty and secret angst, doing the right thing while going through days in a fog, going through the motions with SHIELD and with the team.

It could be a Steve/Bucky story, where Steve discovers that the Winter Soldier is Bucky and does everything to get him back - or maybe he doesn't, because accepting Bucky is dead, looking forward to the day he can go and join Bucky, finally, is part of what makes Steve survive this. God, Steve hopes the serum didn't actually make him immortal... He survived a plane crash and 70 years in the ice, but surely, _surely_ they wouldn't have been so cruel?

So maybe Steve gets the Winter Soldier back, and Bucky is still in there somewhere and when he's deprogrammed, Steve and Bucky cling to each other, because they both know they're all they have now.

Or so Steve thinks, until he sees how Bucky and Natasha are looking at each other. Maybe it's not a Steve/Bucky story after all, not a happy one in any case. Maybe instead, Steve gets to watch how Bucky finds other people to know him, to hold his memory, to make him alive.

Maybe when he's watching like that, watching as Bucky laughs with Clint and Natasha, seeming comfortable in a way that makes Steve's gut twist, maybe then Tony comes up behind Steve and startles him with a clever observation, something like "You could do it too, you know," which Steve pretends not to understand. Tony isn't fooled; he goes on: "I know you like to pretend you're all alone in the world - maybe it suits your tragic sensibilities, and who am I to judge. But you could, if you wanted to. You could let people in. You could start living again. It's your choice."

And Steve remembers Tony doesn't have many people left who know him, either; Howard is dead and Tony killed Obadiah himself. Steve wonders if Jarvis can die. He wonders if Tony made Jarvis, who knows Tony better than anyone ever could, so that there would be someone who knew Tony and kept knowing him long after Tony died - of old age or in a reckless suicide mission.

And then, because this is a fic, Steve would have an epiphany about how he'd like Tony to be someone who knew him, and how he would like to know Tony, and they could both hold each other's lives for a little while, maybe.

And then they would fuck and feel alive and it would all be very cathartic for the reader and maybe for the author, too, at least until the story was over.

**

Yeah. That.


End file.
